A British radio host who made numerous vile anti-Semitic statements over four years of broadcasts was sentenced to 32 months of jail last week and banned from broadcasting for ten years, Jewish News reported. Graham Hart, 69, of Penponds, Camborne, pleaded guilty to eight counts of inciting racial hatred in June. His comments included comparing Jewish people to rats, calling Hitler “the greatest man of the twentieth century,” and denying the Holocaust. He also labeled Jews who “run everything” as “filth, evil, and not of this world,” and said “it isn’t just the white people who hate the Jews … everyone hates the Jews.” His comments also incited murder as he said: “The Jews have got to go down, they’ve just got to go down. Let’s get rid of the Jews.

Eighteen frum girls from New York were forced to spend Shabbos in Europe after they were kicked off flights twice from Amsterdam to New York for unclear reasons. Hamodia reported on the incident after speaking to askanim in New York, relatives of the girls, and other passengers on the plane. The girls were part of a larger group of 56 girls who were on a tour of Jewish sites in Europe with Rebbetzin Shulamis Sternbuch of Israel. When the girls arrived in Amsterdam at the start of their trip on July 20, a KLM/Delta security official at the airport accused the girls of violating mask guidelines on the plane and threatened they would be blacklisted. The girls denied the claims, saying they wore masks at all times, removing them only for eating.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rejected the Fixsler family’s appeal to save Alta’s life. The ECHR sent a letter to the Fixlers on Monday evening stating that it agrees with the decision of the UK court mandating the withdrawal of life support from 2-year-old Alta. The decision was made despite the fact that Israeli and US hospitals have expressed willingness to take responsibility for Alta’s care and the parents are willing to transfer her at no cost to the UK. Last week, the US State Department granted a non-immigrant visa for Alta to be assessed and possibly treated in the US. Alta’s parents are Israeli citizens and her father is a US citizen.

Russian police in the Krasnodar region of Russia near the Black Sea formulated an elaborate ruse to arrest members of an anti-Semitic criminal gang by faking the murder of a rabbi, the UK’s Times reported. In order to monitor the activities of the Citizens of the USSR group, a pro-communist group that believes that the Soviet Union still exists and still hasn’t accepted the demise of the communist Russian regime, undercover policemen infiltrated the group. One of the undercover policemen, who presented himself in the gang as a hitman, was asked by two members to murder a local rabbi, Rabbi Yury Tkach. The undercover cop agreed on the condition that he would be appointed as the head of the group’s “KGB” directorate for Krasnodar.

Following months of pressure from Jewish organizations to appoint an envoy to combat anti-Semitism, President Joe Biden on Friday officially named Deborah Lipstadt as the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism. Lipstadt, 74, who grew up in Far Rockaway, New York, has been a professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia since 1993 and is the author of eight books related to the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. One of her books, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, published in 1994, was challenged in court when British Holocaust denier David Irving sued Lipstadt for libel in 2000.

In a first for Australia, an Orthodox rabbi was appointed as a Supreme Court justice last week. Attorney General John Quigley announced on Thursday that Rabbi Marcus Solomon has been appointed as a judge on the Supreme Court of Western Australia. Rabbi Solomon established the Beit Midrash of Western Australia in 1993, an Orthodox shul in the city of Perth, and serves a leading role in the city’s Jewish community. “It is with great pleasure that I announce the appointment of Mr. Solomon to the bench of the Supreme Court,” Western Australia Attorney-General John Quigley said in a statement.

As Tokyo hosts a no-crowd Olympics in the shadow of the coronavirus, Rabbi Mendi Sudakevich is feeling disappointed, Ynet reported. Rabbi Sudakevich, who has been the Chabad shaliach in Tokyo for 20 years, was expecting to host masses of Israelis before a resurgence of the coronavirus led to the decision to hold the 2021 Olympics without spectators. Prior to the decision, Rabbi Sudakevich and his family were busy preparing for the influx of Jewish guests who would need kosher food. “It was mainly about food,” Rabbi Sudakevich said. “Originally we started renting out places near the shul and we organized a team that could serve a large audience.” Rabbi Sudakevich said that in the past he hosted about 1,000 visitors for an event.

The three Israelis who were arrested three weeks ago by Nigerian authorities for alleged contact with Biafran separatists were released from prison and are now safely back in Israel. Pro-Israel activist Rudy Rochman, filmmaker Andrew Noam Leibman and French-Israeli journalist were in Nigeria to film a documentary on lesser-known Jewish communities around the world when they were arrested. The three were released from prison on Tuesday evening and transferred to US custody (two of them are US citizens). US embassy staff brought them to the local Chabad center for one night and on Wednesday night they boarded a flight to Israel via Istanbul, according to a Times of Israel report. Their passports and phones were returned to them right before they boarded their flight.

The CEO of Unilever, Alan Jope, sent a letter to several Jewish organizations, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Anti-Defamation League, saying that his company does not support BDS, drawing a distinction between the call of BDS to boycott Israel completely and a boycott of Yehudah and Shomron. “Unilever rejects completely and repudiates unequivocally any forms of discrimination or intolerance,” Jope wrote. “Antisemitism has no place in any society.

US State Department staff discovered a swastika etched onto the wall of an elevator on Monday, Axios reported on Tuesday. The elevator is located near the office of the special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism in the Harry S. Truman building. According to the report, the area is heavily monitored and has security cameras at the entrances, raising questions on how the incident occurred without being detected. The position of the anti-Semitism envoy has not yet been filled despite calls by Jewish organizations to fill the position in the wake of the recent surge of anti-Semitic attacks in the US. Secretary of State Tony Blinken sent an email on Tuesday to all of the department’s staff members condemning the incident.